


Tomorrow's Out of Sight

by Mortissimo



Series: And the World Will Live as One [4]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode: s05e01 Search and Rescue, Genii (Stargate), M/M, Mild Gore, Multi, Original Character(s), Other, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 04:49:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17995175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortissimo/pseuds/Mortissimo
Summary: John tries to keep events pointed to a better future, while Ronon just wants to keep everybody alive.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> More on the mild gore in the endnotes.

         John stepped out of the stargate and froze, face-to-barrel with a security team of P90s.

         “Hey guys,” he opened cautiously, leaning over to set his own weapon on the floor. Things seemed normal back at the ranch thus far.

         “Welcome back, Colonel. We were just starting to get worried.” Carter came down the steps with Rodney trailing behind her.

         “How long was I gone?” He considered raising his hands, just for procedure's sake, but nobody seemed inclined to treat him like an emergency just yet.

         “Major Lorne reported you left M4S-587 twelve days ago. What happened?” John frowned. If his deadline to apparently somehow rescue Beckett was Teyla's baby, then twelve days was cutting it pretty fine.

         “Solar flare, went to the future, supposed to tell Rodney he was right.” That was the short version anyway. The Cliff's Notes. It'd have to do. Behind Carter, Rodney brightened immediately. “I didn't miss the baby, did I?”

         “Not quite, though Dr. Keller says it'll be any day now.” John nodded, as Rodney turned and took the stairs two at a time back up to the control center. For some reason. Carter, apparently unfazed, didn't so much as look.

         “Glad to hear it. Look, I've got some intel on this Beckett mystery, but it has an expiration date, so I need to get back out there as soon as I can.” The security team took a step back as John took a step forward, which wasn't a great sign. Apparently there was such thing as too well trained.

        “That'll have to wait, John. I'm sorry, but you know the drill.” Unfortunately, John had helped write the drill, so yes, he did know the drill, he just wasn't sure he had time.  

         “So long as you put a rush order on it. I got the impression there's a narrow window here, and I want to make it home for the big day.” Carter nodded and gestured for the team to take him to isolation to get poked and prodded.

        “I'll see what I can–”

        “ _Hey!_ ” Rodney's voice crackled across the gate room PA, just this side of too loud. “ _Sheppard is right! Which means, I guess, I'm right. Or was right. Will be?_ ” Carter turned and waved for Rodney to come down and explain, but Rodney just waved back at her with a pleading look until she, John guessed, felt sorry for him and went. Whatever Rodney had to say to her, John was too busy being escorted out of the gate room to eavesdrop on it.

         Isolation and blood tests were both about as fun as John remembered from the last ten times, but true to Carter's word, there was already a team there when John arrived. Keller was apologetic but thorough, and John couldn't help wondering what she had ended up looking like as part wraith. She must have caught him staring, but didn't ask, which John figured was more due to shyness than politeness.

         Whatever else she may have turned out to be in the future, Keller was definitely efficient. Once Keller had verified John wasn't a clone or a robot double, John told Carter some of what the Rodney hologram had told him, with the exception of the wraith parts. It wasn't even an hour later that John found himself back in front of the stargate, with Rodney, Ronon and Major Lorne's team beside him. Carter hadn't been thrilled about the lack of detail regarding what to expect on M2S-445, but she trusted John and his team to handle it, which was still something he found startling in a CO.

         “Here goes nothing,” John muttered as the wormhole engaged. He could feel Ronon giving him a sidelong look, but Ronon, as usual, said nothing. John led them though.

        What M2S-445 turned out to have was an abandoned (more likely culled) industrial town beside the gate, all crumbling brick and rusted metal. It looked kind of like the crappy parts of Seattle John had gotten lost in once or twice, only without any sign that people had lived there in the last decade. The only building they came across that showed any sign of life was what looked like an old factory on the outskirts of town. The open door seemed as much like a threat as an invitation, but it was where the one measly life sign flickered faintly, so there they went.

         There was no way to tell which of the building's floors the life signs detector was indicating, so they split up to cover more ground in true horror movie bad idea fashion. Rodney and Lorne took the upper level, while John and Ronon descended into the building's basement, which turned out to be unnervingly veiny.

         It was only a few rooms before Lorne's voice in John's ear broke the eerie silence, pulling him gratefully away from his examination of something in a yellowish tank that he really hoped was dead.

         “ _We've got him, sir._ ” John and Ronon exchanged a look.

         “You've got who, Major?”

         “ _Doctor Beckett, sir. I don't understand how, but it's definitely him. He's in pretty bad shape, so Lieutenant Edison is going to take him back to Atlantis, but…_ ” Lorne trailed off unhelpfully, leaving John enough time to imagine all sorts of equally unhelpful nightmare scenarios.

        “But what?” John prompted.

        “ _He says Michael's had him for two years. I don't get it._ ” John glanced over to Ronon again, who was frowning at the ground.

         “I guess we'll have to figure it out once we get home. Let's all get out of here, Major, I think we got what we came for.” This both explained and really, really did not explain things, but hopefully Carson would be able to clear some things up himself once Keller helped him out. And if he couldn't, Michael was definitely going to have a lot of explaining to do.

         “ _Doctor McKay found something he wants to check out, we'll just be another… Should it be doing that?_ ”

         “Major–” John started, but then the air was on fire, and then the ceiling was trying its best to become the new floor, and then everything went black for a while.

 

        John awoke to the sound of shifting rubble and a pretty literal stabbing pain in his side. He wasn't sure what kind of noise he made in response, but the shifting noises stopped immediately, right before Ronon's face, dusty but relatively fine, swung into view.

         “You okay?”

         “Peachy.” John grimaced as something in the remains of the building settled creakily, and another jolt of agony sliced through him. “Hey, I think something got me on the right there, can you check it out?” Ronon ducked down behind the I beam, out of sight, and just as quickly popped back up again.

         “Just a scratch,” he almost definitely lied. Ronon was about as straight-faced as they came on a good day, but either John was finally getting to where he could read Ronon, or this was a really bad day, because even Ronon looked scared.

        “Right, sure.” All the more reason for John to keep a level head. “I don't know why I didn't see this coming. I thought the whole thing seemed way too easy.” Ronon patted his shoulder and moved back out of John's line of sight, where he picked back up shoving at debris (John assumed) and grunting.

         “Not your fault.” Another chunk of rock moved something that put torque on something that nudged what John was beginning to suspect was actually lodged all the way through him, and John saw stars. He thought he did a pretty good job of biting back any noises, but Ronon stopped again immediately, so maybe John wasn't that great at keeping quiet.

         “Radio?” John asked half-heartedly. Sure, it was kind of obvious, but sometimes in an emergency you forget the obvious. He hoped.

         “Tried it. Nothing.” Ronon resumed pushing things, but more cautiously.

         “Seems like a hell of a time for Michael to decide he doesn't want us poking around his stuff anymore.” John stopped, and Ronon didn't say anything, which was pretty normal, but there was a stillness to him, close behind John, that felt off. “What. What is it?”

         “Schuyler hasn't checked in for about a week. Twice as long as usual. They were getting close last time, and then… Nothing.” Another grinding noise and a frustrated grunt. Ronon shoving something heavy. Didn't hurt this time, at least.

         “You think Michael turned on him?” For all that John, and most of the rest of them, had been considering the wraith something of a disposable asset, they should probably have kept Ronon's history in mind. At least going over had been firmly Schuyler's choice, whatever else happened.

        “No. Dunno. Michael's gone to ground too, though, which is weirder. I don't like not knowing.” There was something John was supposed to remember, some connection that tried to jump out at him, but between the hell of a day he'd had anyway and then being crushed by a building, he was pretty literally hard-pressed to remember what it was.

         “Feel you there, buddy,” was all John could think to say, though it was very sincerely meant. The silence stretched between them, punctuated by the creaks and groans of stone and metal under pressure. It was only after John jerked painfully awake that he realized he been drifting, and that he might be in some real trouble.

         “Ronon.” There was a soft noise behind him, and Ronon leaned back around. “I'm gonna need you to get out of here.”

         Ronon snorted.

        “I'm serious. Atlantis is gonna send someone after us soon, and I need you to go tell them where I am.” There was that. There were the noises of the still-settling building. There was the part where John didn't want Ronon to watch him die.

        “I'm not leaving you.” Ronon scraped around John's (non-impaled) side and wrapped his hands around the I beam responsible for maybe most of the pressure pinning John. “Ready?”

         “No!”

         “Tough.” Ronon pushed, and John's vision whited out for a minute. Must have been more than just his vision, too, since when it cleared, Ronon had come much, much closer, his eyes wide and his mouth a flat line.

         “You okay?” It was much quieter this time, and John flashed a thumbs-up with his free hand. He didn't really trust his voice at the moment. Ronon patted John's face and sat back, visibly trying to assemble a brave facade. With everything that had happened to him, it wasn't very often Ronon looked as young as he was.

         “I'm not going anywhere,” he said, and there wasn't really much John could do about it one way or the other. It wasn't like he was going anywhere either, so he might as well relax, get a little shut-eye.


	2. Chapter 2

          Clenched between his knees, Ronon's hands were starting to throb. The ceiling was too close to stand up straight, and the walls were too close to sit right, and it was McKay, not him, who had the tight spaces thing, but Ronon was beginning to relate. And of course there was nothing he could do about it. Couldn't radio for help, couldn't move the rubble, couldn't fix the hole in Sheppard's side. The rebar kept it from bleeding too bad, but it definitely wasn't _not_ bleeding. All he could do was sit and wait.

         With another frustrated noise, he picked himself back up into a crouch and set his palms against a chunk of concrete. The noises Sheppard had made, though. Each one almost silent and sharp as a needle in Ronon. Getting out by killing Sheppard would be never getting out at all. Ronon let his hands hang back at his sides.

         “Think Teyla's gonna have the baby without us?” Nothing. When Ronon scrambled back around, John's eyes were closed, his hand hanging limp.

         It really had been a long time since Ronon was trapped in a bombed-out building with a dying friend, but suddenly it felt like no time at all had passed. This was the feeling he hated. Like his heart was trying to break out of his ribs and he couldn't get a full breath.

         The hand Ronon passed over John's nose and mouth was shaking, but he felt the unsteady puff of air he was looking for and let his hand rest on John's face. For a second he considered… But no, this wasn't the time. There was too much uncertainty.

         “Sorry,” he muttered, and slapped Sheppard.

         The beam on his chest kept Sheppard from thrashing around, which was lucky, but it didn't look like he enjoyed the experience. At least he woke up. The thing clawing its way up Ronon's throat backed down a little.

         “What the hell was that?” Sheppard fixed Ronon with a pissy glare, as Ronon shrugged and looked innocent.

         “Chunk of ceiling?” He craned his neck disingenuously. “Why? You weren't taking a nap, were you?” _Please don't crash out on me._

         “No! Just resting my eyes.” It was pretty clear Sheppard was aware neither of them believed it, but the thought counted for something.

         “Sure you were.” Keeping up a conversation wasn't really one of Ronon's strong suits anymore, probably never would be again, but letting Sheppard lapse into silence was apparently a bad idea. Ronon wondered if Sheppard would let him hold his hand.

         “Hey, tell me about your future thing.” For a minute, Sheppard didn't respond, and Ronon was afraid to look up, but when he did, he found Sheppard frowning up at the ceiling like there was a riddle up there.

         “It was weird,” was all he said, after all that contemplation.

         “Like how? Was I there?” Sheppard looked at him, incredulous.

         “It was _fifty thousand years_ in the future. No, you were not there.”

         “But you said McKay was, and he's older than I am.” Like a decade or so was going to make much of a difference that far ahead.

         “I'm telling him you said that. But, no. It was a recording. The real McKay was long gone.” Ronon knew what it felt like to be the last person on your planet. More or less. He wasn't sure a hologram would help or not.

         “What killed everyone?” Sheppard shrugged.

         “He didn't say. Just 'time.’”

         “McKay?”

         “No. Well, not him either.” The look on Sheppard's face shifted, to something between confused and calculating, as he glanced Ronon up and down. This seemed like it was going to get interesting. “Hey, can I ask you a really personal question?”

         “Sure.” Ronon shrugged. Whatever kept Sheppard talking was good, and it wasn't like Ronon had a lot of secrets. It seemed weird, but being around the wraith runner again was kind of helping him deal with some stuff Atlantis had helped him bury maybe a little too deep.

         “What's the deal with you and Schuyler? How's that… Whole thing work?” Sheppard flapped his free hand around in the kind of vague gesture the Earth people liked to use when they were too uptight to actually say what they meant. After that first night back with Schuyler, Ronon had been disappointed to learn Earth was one of those planets where they got all weird about which grown-ass adults slept together. The wraith thing, fine, that was unusual, but at least as many people seemed to be hung up on the male thing.

         “Which part?” Sheppard made the gesture again.

         “Let's start with the beginning, I guess?” Ronon sat back down on the chunk of concrete at the edge of Sheppard's line of sight.

         “Like I said, he saved my life. A couple times. We fell into overlapping patterns of dead worlds. It'd been years since I'd seen anybody twice. He would… Heal me.” The first time, Ronon remembered waking to searing light, coursing through his veins and making every nerve sing. It had been a rough fight, and when Ronon was taken out by a knife to the belly, he'd figured that was it. Waking up to the first pure burst of joy he'd known since long before the culling of Sateda was almost as much a shock as the knife had been.

         “With his–” This time, when Sheppard flexed his hand, Ronon knew what he was getting at.

         “Yeah. Every time we met again. I was always pretty banged up.” The wraith runner always left his weapons with Ronon when they parted, to Ronon's eventual protest. In one of their very few, very short conversations, he'd called it ‘protecting an investment.’ Ronon wondered where his wraith was now.

         “And you guys also…” Left to his own devices, Ronon wasn't sure Sheppard would ever finish a sentence. He waited. “You know.” He waited. “...did other stuff.”

         “Yeah.” That first time had been much less of a surprise than the Gift. The wraith had kissed him, like a human, out of the blue and nestled in the upper branches of a tree while their hunters circled below. He'd been so careful, such a contrast to the whirlwind of death of an hour ago, and when he'd pulled back, his slit pupils had been almost as round as a human's. Then he'd dropped down on the hunters, and Ronon had followed, and the next time the wraith healed him, Ronon let himself feel the fire it lit in his veins, and considered for the first time he felt it because the wraith felt it too.

         “Well how's that… Go?” The rubble above them shifted, and both glanced up as one, watching until it finished its grinding and fell silent again.

         “Do you not know how sex works, or is it sex with men you don't get?” If Sheppard had been the first to bring it up, or if he'd been less skittish about it, maybe Ronon wouldn't have snapped. It had been a frustrating couple of years in some respects. He didn't quite feel bad, anyway, even as Sheppard kept his eyes on the ceiling. There were more little noises above them now, though Ronon couldn't tell what they were.

          “The wraith thing.” From this angle, Ronon couldn't see much of Sheppard's face, but he didn't think he'd seen this expression before.

         “It's not that weird.” The noises were definitely getting closer, and definitely weren't settling. “You hear that? Sheppard nodded.

         “I can't tell who it is. Supposedly we're in a truce with Michael, but we did just blow up one of his bases.” At last, this was something Ronon could deal with. He unholstered his gun and double-checked the settings. At least if they died this conversation would be over.

         “You wanna yell?” Sheppard nodded, and they started yelling, and when one of the engineers poked her face in Ronon nearly shot it off, but he was pretty sure she'd forgive him eventually.

         In the end, they had to get the Earth ship to beam Sheppard out of there, which took them a few more hours than were remotely comfortable. Michael never showed, and neither did any of his creepy footsoldiers, which got even weirder once McKay explained that the trap they'd set off sent a signal out to Michael's ship. Sheppard had been rushed into surgery the second they were aboard, leaving Ronon to listen to McKay amp up his own anxiety and the anxiety of everyone in earshot. Apparently he'd found some kind of database of Michael's, which would come in handy once Michael inevitably stabbed them in the back. In less good news, Lorne, Edison and Beckett were the only other ones who'd made it out, and Beckett had collapsed immediately and had to be stuck in stasis until they could figure out what was making his organs shut down. All in all, not a total win by a long shot, but Sheppard was expected to pull through okay, and Caldwell said he was was sure they'd make it back in time to greet Teyla's son.

         As soon as Jennifer let him, Ronon slipped into the room they'd left Sheppard in after the surgery. He always looked so much smaller in the infirmary, so fragile, which Ronon knew was stupid. He looked asleep at first, but when Ronon turned back from sliding the door shut soundlessly, he found Sheppard squinting at him.

         “Hey.” Sheppard nodded back, evidently still half-conscious from whatever they'd given him for the surgery.

        “Lorne 'n’ McKay?”

        “They're fine. Go back to sleep.” Sheppard nodded again, apparently satisfied.

         “Good. Can't screw up the timeline too bad. Not even wraith yet.” Ronon waited for more, puzzled, but Sheppard was out like a light. Apparently Jennifer had given him something serious. Ronon dragged a chair over and settled in to wait, boots kicked up on the edge of the bed railing. He wondered if Sheppard would let him hold his hand, and then abruptly Ronon decided he didn't care, and leaned forward to grab it anyway. Fingers interlaced, Ronon let himself drift away at last


	3. Chapter 3

          When John woke up, he felt like his head was stuffed with cotton and the rest of him was floating, so apparently he'd rated the good drugs. The _Daedalus_ ceiling slowly swam into focus above him, up at a reasonable height for ceilings, which was a nice change from the lab basement. There was a pressure on his side that, from his experience, was going to turn into an ache the minute his pain receptors were firing on all cylinders again. The weird part was, though, he couldn't feel his right hand at all. For a second, the pit of his stomach dropped somewhere around the main sublight engines, until John remembered his right had been his free hand, and there was no way Keller was _that_ bad at surgery.

         John glanced down, and sure enough, his hand was still attached, both to his wrist and, slightly less firmly, to Ronon's hand. Experimentally, he tried pulling it loose, but apparently even (especially) on controlled substances, John wasn't a match for Ronon's strength. So they were just gonna hold hands now. Fine.

         The warm haze of the painkillers and the hum of the engines lulled John back to sleep, where he had some really fascinating dreams involving both Ronon and Todd in pink, frilly aprons and sensible dreadlock updos. In the dream, he almost thought he knew Todd's real name, but whenever he tried to say it, it kept coming out ‘Sheppard.’

         The next time John woke up (he _had_ to stop making a habit of this), it was either in mid-beamout, or Keller had somehow found a way to upgrade his painkillers from ‘comfortably numb’ to ‘shapeless being of literal light.’ As the gray ceiling of the _Daedalus_ faded out above him, and the teal ceiling of the Atlantis infirmary faded in, John was forced to assume it was not the drugs. A moment later, as though to confirm, Keller's anxious face slowly leaned into his field of vision.

         “How are you feeling, Colonel?”

         “Lightheaded,” John snickered, but for some reason Keller didn't seem to get the joke.

        “You had us worried for a minute there, but we got all your new holes sewn up again, so you should be back on your feet again in a couple of weeks.” Keller smiled, and the thing John was supposed to remember to do poked at the back of his brain again.

         “What happened to Beckett?” Keller's smile faltered and fell, which always made John feel like an asshole. The beeping behind his head picked up the pace a little.

         “We're not sure. He made it through in one piece, but he fainted in the gate room. We had to… I didn't know what to do.” There it was again, _poke poke poke_. “He's in stasis now until we can figure out what's wrong. We think… I think he might be a clone. It would explain why he told Lorne that Michael had him when he was still here on Atlantis.”

          “And Lorne and McKay are fine?”

         “Lorne broke his leg, but other than that, they're all right. Thank God. Aside from you four, only Lieutenant Edison made it out.” Even the best drugs couldn't do anything for the feeling that nailed John's diaphragm to the floor whenever he led good people to their deaths. He sure did feel it a lot these days, though he wasn't sure if that was better or worse than back on Earth, where it was rarer that he _didn't_ feel it.

         “I'm sorry,” Keller said, much quieter, and John blinked at the ceiling until the feeling at least receded enough for him to speak again.

         “It is what it is.” He'd have to talk to Evan about it. The major seemed pretty resilient, but then again people always did until they didn't. “How's Teyla?”

         “I am well, John.” It never ceased to amaze John how much just the sound of Teyla's voice centered him. Even in the middle of a firefight, she radiated calm that felt like the still ocean. Above him, Keller gave a watery nod and pulled back the curtain behind her. Teyla smiled at him from the next bed over, sitting cross-legged with the blankets pooled around her waist and a blue bundle cradled in her arms. “ _We_ are well.” John leaned over to get a clearer look and regretted it immediately as the movement tugged on something in his side that had clearly recently been a hole. Keller was on him in a flash, pressing him gently but firmly back against the pillows and giving him a reproving look.

         “I'm not sewing that up again, you know. You undo any of my work, you're going to have to redo it yourself.”

         “Yes ma'am,” John put on a show of grumbling, but truth be told he was already unenthused about the prospect of a ‘couple of weeks’ in bed. Keller carefully patted his right shoulder and then left, whispering something to Teyla on her way out that John didn't quite catch. A moment later, he felt a hand on his arm, and turned to find silent, deadly Teyla beside his bed.

         “Are you sure you should be up?” He asked. It couldn't have been much more than a day since the baby had been born, even counting the _Daedalus_ trip, but Teyla just shook her head.

         “I told you, I am fine.” Carefully, she bent and lowered the bundle in her arms until John could see his tiny, squishy, perfect face.

         “Well hey.” John could feel his face splitting without his say-so. He was pretty sure he was grinning like an idiot, but he was pretty sure he didn't care. If all else failed, at least the kid was all right. “What'd you name him?”

         “Torren John. For my father,” Teyla said, as John felt his chest fill with a buoyant light that had nothing to do with the drugs, “and for you.”

         “Good name,” John croaked, and the three of them sat in silence for a while, as the bustle of the infirmary moved around them. In all the death they found themselves neck-deep in on a day-to-day basis, this small spark of life seemed like a miracle. It really felt good to once again have hope for the future.

         Wait.

         “Oh crap,” John said suddenly, as the thing he'd been trying to remember busted its way through the fog of the drugs. Teyla didn't dignify his outburst with words, just waited for him with eyebrows raised as he tried to fight his way through the haze to a coherent thought. “Look, this is going to sound crazy from start to finish, but when I ended up in the future, future-hologram-McKay told me to tell _you_ to look for Schuyler.” Somehow, in her infinite wisdom and patience, Teyla did not walk away in the middle of that mess.

         “He has still not checked back in with Atlantis,” Teyla guessed, and John shrugged. “I cannot leave my child, and I will not take him with me. I'm sorry, John.” Well that made sense, but it didn't add up to why McKay would tell him to ask Teyla. Obviously he remembered the timing, so why didn't he explain how Teyla was supposed to go looking for anyone immediately after the birth of her son? For crying out loud, John wasn't a mind-reader.

         Oh.

         But he was an idiot.

         “Can't you find him with your… Mind powers?” Teyla frowned down at him, but it wasn't one of her mad frowns.

         “I believe I can. My dreams have been… Strange, lately, but for a few nights now they have been filled with grief and blood. I assumed that something terrible had happened, but I also assumed that it had happened to…” Teyla looked at the child in her arms, and gravely traced the shape of an eyebrow. “Someone else.”

          “ _Would_ you?” John tried to make it a question and not a request. Teyla thought for a long moment.

          “Yes,” she said at length, “I suppose it makes sense to use my gift to find one of its givers.”

         “Great. Can you press the call button for me? I feel like I'm made of morphine and bruises.”

          Teyla did, which bought Marie, who informed them that Keller had gone to bed for the night, and implied that an attempt to wake her would possibly be met with lethal force by her team. Much more diplomatically than John would have managed, Teyla managed to talk the nurse into passing a message along. In further spectacular luck, Colonel Carter was not only awake, but willing to hear out more of John's wacky ideas.

          In the end, Teyla's actual communication with Schuyler was almost anticlimactic. She'd climbed back into the other bed, with Torren held _very carefully_ in John's arms, and almost as soon as she lay down and closed her eyes, Teyla was back up again, her teeth bared in a snarl.

         “Locus,” she hissed. “He is on Locus, and he is _angry_.”

         “With what? What's he doing on the Genii homeworld?” Carter asked, arms folded.

         “The Genii have taken someone from him. I think… Yes, Michael, but there is a name I do not recognize, and his thoughts are full of nothing else.”

          “The Genii killed Michael? I guess we owe them a fruit basket or something.” John snorted, then grimaced. He'd turned down another dose of painkillers in order to keep up with the conversation, and all the myriad aches from having a building dropped on his head were making themselves known.

         “I believe they may be near killing Schuyler as well. He seemed to be in a great deal of pain.”

        “Do you think he's going to fight back if we try to bring him in?”

        “Not if I go.” When Ronon had come in was anybody's guess, but John didn't envy the nerves of anybody who might have tried to stop him. Must not be Marie's shift anymore. He crossed the room to John's bedside and looked down at Torren with an expression of such pure joy that John was briefly concerned he might be possessed. It was short-lived, however, which was a real loss, because John had never seen Ronon smile like that before, and now he had to be afraid he never would again.

         “I don't know if it's a great idea to send you in alone, Ronon. If it's Genii searching for a guerilla wraith, they might shoot first and ask questions afterward,” Carter said. She seemed about as thrown as John felt, but she recovered admirably.

         “I know how he moves. He'll know me. The Genii don't even have trackers on us. It'll be easy.”

         “Ronon,” Teyla said softly, “you did not feel this rage. It threatens to consume him, if it has not done so already. He might–” But Ronon was already shaking his head.

         “He'll know me. Trust me.”

         “We do, but…” Here Teyla looked at Colonel Carter for backup, only Carter had already turned and was sizing Ronon up.

          “You're sure you can do it?” Ronon nodded, only once, but once was all he needed. “Don't get caught. Things are going to get diplomatically interesting enough as it is.” That felt like an understatement, and little Torren chose that moment to remind everyone in the vicinity, and possibly everyone on the planet, that he had lungs and knew how to use them. Eternally merciful Teyla took him from John's arms and began pacing the length of the infirmary as John's ears rang. Ronon patted John on the head, which only barely managed to escape coming off as condescending.

          “How you holding up?”

         “Oh, you know. Not bad for having been impaled.” Ronon flashed what could only be recognized as a smile in the greater context of Ronon, and turned back to Carter.

         “Now?” He asked, and Carter shrugged.

        “I guess there's no time like the present, if you're ready.” Ronon left the room without another word. Carter looked back at John with eyebrows raised, but all John could do was shrug. Carter shrugged back, and turned to follow Ronon. Apparently, John figured, after something like a decade in SG-1, you get to a point where nothing really fazes you anymore. Eventually, with Teyla meandering the halls of Atlantis with her child, and most of the infirmary shut down for the night, there was nothing left for him to do but sleep again.


	4. Chapter 4

          On the other side of the ring, Ronon opened his eyes to pitch black and the sound of the portal snapping shut just behind him. He took off like a shot in the darkness. You never knew who was going to show up at the sound of the ring, and he suspected the Genii were less friendly than most, especially now their cover had been thoroughly blown.

         It was surprisingly easy to fall back into old habits. Ronon crashed through the underbrush blindly until he came to a clearing, then stopped dead and waited. The forest wasn't silent, since forests never are, but it was damn near. Even at night there should have been something rustling through the ferns, but all Ronon could hear was the quiet drone of insects. Everything else seemed to be holding its breath, too scared to move. This was a Hunting ground all right. Ronon picked a direction at an angle from his mad dash from the ring and stepped back into the trees.

         He was no ghost in the dark like the wraith had been, but he was quiet enough to get the job done. If Locus had a moon, it wasn't up, but the starlight was bright enough for Ronon to pick his way through without making much of a sound. For a while, everything was slow and silent going. There was enough of a chill in the air, in contrast to the warmth of the ground, that even with no moon to guess by Ronon assumed it had rounded midnight and was approaching dawn, when things would get trickier. You couldn't rush these things, though, not if you wanted to survive. Teyla had said the wraith was hurt, which meant he would've gone high or low, either up a tree or in a cave, and by Ronon's judgement the canopy here was way too thin to make a good cover. So all Ronon had to do was find the right cave. Somewhere.

        Realistically, the crackle of the radio must have been quiet enough, but to Ronon's heightened awareness it might as well have been a gunshot. He snapped his head in its direction and crouched, as an accompanying beam of light swept idly in his direction. The soldiers were some way off yet, speaking in low voices and ruining their night vision with the lights mounted to their guns. Ronon made sure his was loose in his holster, but left it there. He wasn't here to kill humans.

        Ronon crept closer until he could pick up what the soldiers were saying, which unsurprisingly turned out to be complaining.

        “...been out here for hours, and nobody's seen any sign of this thing. This feels like another one of those grak-hunts from training.”

        “It wasn't a _grak_ that killed Irana and her men last week. It definitely wasn't a grak fighter they shot down by the lake, and whatever just crossed through the ring, it probably wasn't a grak either.”

        “It left? So what are we still doing out here?”

        “Or reinforcements arrived. We don't know. Apparently Voren was asleep at his post again and missed the whole thing.” Guards at the ring would make things more difficult coming back. Ronon hoped Voren hadn't learned his lesson.

        “Typical Voren, I guess.”

        “Both of you shut up,” a third soldier cut in, older and quieter than the other two. “Just because you can't hear it doesn't mean it can't hear you.” That made at least one half-competent soldier in the Genii forces.

         Ronon watched their trajectory for a few more minutes, until they were well out of earshot. If the Genii had shot down one of Michael's darts, this might be a really good day for Atlantis after all. That still left finding _his_ wraith, though. Ronon glanced around, trying to think of what he'd have done hiding on a hostile world. The thing that jumped out at him wasn't so much a thing, really, as the absence of things. There was one direction the trees weren't backlit by the stars, but were black cutouts against a larger, darker shape. A hill. Slow and silent, Ronon headed that way.

         The hill turned out to be a steep, scree-covered incline, dotted here and there with haphazardly leaning trees. Not super stable, then, but landslides might have left hollows the soldiers wouldn't know to look for yet. Ronon cautiously dragged himself halfway up the hill and began to pick his way across. With his eyes on the top of the hill, he nearly missed the dark smear until, laying a hand down on a rock for balance, he felt wet and jerked back, startled to find his palm stained black in the starlight. Red turned black at night too, but Ronon had smelled enough of both wraith and human blood to know the difference, and this blood had never been red. Now that he knew what to look for, Ronon could see that much of what he'd thought were stark shadows were as often an array of smears and droplets of black. It was a path he could just about follow with his eyes closed, now he knew it was there, and it confirmed what Teyla had said. The wraith must be hurt pretty bad to not have healed by now.

         Sure enough, the trail of blood led Ronon to what actually seemed to be a disused, broken-open drainage pipe, its cover long since lost somewhere in the forest floor below. Bracing a hand on the jagged opening, he leaned inside and listened. Only silence, stretching for long moments, and then finally a jagged, involuntary breath. The pipe smelled about equally of stagnant water and the much sharper wraith blood.

         “Hey.” The soft syllable echoed in the pipe's opening, but got no answer. Fine. He'd climbed in grosser. The pipe was just about tall enough to crouch in, calling back unpleasantly to yesterday's building collapse. Under his boots, the floor was somehow both slick and sticky, but Ronon only made it a few steps before metal clattered against his forehead and he stopped.

         “Hey,” he tried again, and got only a soft hiss in answer. What he could only assume was the barrel of a Genii weapon kept tapping him at odd intervals. The wraith's hand must have been shaking pretty bad. “It's Ronon. C'mon, you remember.” He hoped.

         The wraith made a weird trilling noise, like a song Ronon could only hear half of, but the gun didn't move.

         “Time to come home, come on.” In the dark, Ronon frowned. The name the wraith had chosen still felt weird to actually use. Ronon had been so used to thinking of him as just ‘the runner wraith’ that anything else grated at him. “Schuyler?” No answer, though though the gun Ronon could feel a tremor run down the wraith's arm. Of course, Ronon had tried to say his real name before, but the wraith had been right, Ronon couldn't make his throat do the set of multi-note chords that formed the sound, let alone send the telepathic feeling that was supposed to accompany it. Whenever he'd tried, the wraith had laughed at him, but nicely, for a wraith.

         Ronon tried it again, singing the name-tune, or a crappy rendition of it, under his breath, until what sounded like a rough choking sound brought him to a dead halt. At last, the weapon dropped from his forehead to splash into whatever grossness they were standing in.

         “Ronon,” the wraith sighed as the trail end of his laughter bounced away down the pipe. Being a wraith, he always sounded pretty rough, but his voice now was little more than a shredded whisper. “How have you found me?”

         “Easy. Teyla gave me the planet, and from there, well, I know you, you're not that hard to figure out.” The wraith wheezed again, and it sounded like some of the drips and squelches might not have been from the pipe.

         “Yes… Yes, I do go in circles. I cannot seem to shake them.” Ronon waited a moment longer, but the wraith wasn't getting moving on his own, so he reached out into the black until he felt long-fingered, damp hands wrap around his, and then Ronon pulled. The whimper of pain from the wraith was brief enough, but it struck him at least as deeply as the noises from Sheppard had.

         “Can you make it to the ring?” Ronon took an experimental step back, toward the broken mouth of the pipe, and the wraith stepped with him, so maybe it wasn't that bad, despite the blood spatters on the rocks below.

         “With you, yes.” First Ronon and then the wraith emerged into what Ronon was beginning to suspect might be the first hints of dawn. With his first clearish look at what had been done to the wraith, Ronon had to fight the urge to recoil. There was more red and black to him than white and gray. The claws in Ronon's grip were jagged and broken, most close to or across the nail bed. One shoulder looked dislocated at best, one leg was a mess of blood and what was probably bone from shin to mid-thigh. His right eye was swollen completely shut, and he seemed to have bitten through his bottom lip. And that didn't take into account the buckshot and bullets the wraith must have taken, judging from the rest of his pocked body.

         Without thinking, Ronon spread the fingers of the wrath's right hand and pressed the palm to his chest. He could spare a few years, couldn't he? But the wraith shook his head, and silently showed Ronon the faded pink scar of what had been his feeding organ.

         “I will need your help, but that is help I can never take again.”

        “Your timing sucks,” Ronon muttered, to a one-shouldered shrug from the wraith. He knew from experience he could carry the wraith, but not the distance to the ring, and the wraith knew it too.

        Picking his way silently through the underbrush hadn't been a quick process, and it wasn't much quicker on the return path, despite Ronon's decreasing desire to avoid clashing with the Genii. At least the patrols seemed largely to have been called off, and those who were still searching had also long since abandoned any pretense of stealth. By some miracle, they made it to the ring without conflict, only to come up short as the wraith silently pointed out the solitary guard standing beside the ring's dial.

         “I got this,” Ronon murmured. “Can I drop you a sec?” Wearily, the wraith nodded, and Ronon lowered him carefully onto the ground, in a patch of ferns both tall and soft. The wraith closed his good eye immediately, which Ronon tried not to take as a bad sign. Ronon stepped onto the path to the ring. The guard, who was apparently not sleeping this time, straightened up and began to raise his weapon as Ronon, fake-cheerful and half covered in blood of two species, came striding toward him.

        “Morning, Voren!” Ronon called out, and watched the guard's face morph from concern to confusion, as the barrel of his weapon tilted back toward the ground.

         “Do I know–” was as far as the guard got before Ronon's stun caught him in a flash and he crumpled to the ground.

         “Night, Voren.” Ronon turned on his heel and went back for the wraith. It was clear the wraith hadn't moved at all since Ronon dropped him there, and Ronon would have had to check for breath again if he couldn't hear the wet wheezing. Gingerly, Ronon knelt and gathered the wraith into his arms. The wraith stirred and trilled in response, but didn't open his eyes. Heart in his throat, Ronon dialed Atlantis and carried his wraith home.


	5. Chapter 5

          The call down to the infirmary to get ready must not have woken John up, but the collective intake of breath a minute later, and the chaos that followed, were enough to jar him out of sleep. Someone considerate had drawn the curtains around his bed, which was good for sleeping but bad for snooping. Against the wishes of most of his body, John pushed himself upright and leaned far enough out to pull the curtain back. All he managed to catch were the backs of half the medical staff of the city, gathered too tightly around the rolling gurney for John to see what had happened, and Ronon, staring after them with a grim expression and red and black streaks covering most of his upper body.

         “Hey,” John whispered, then repeated it a little louder when Ronon didn't react. At the second one, Ronon did turn, his bleak look pulling into a frown as he caught sight of John.

        “Get back in bed,” Ronon grumbled, and the stitches pulling in John's side agreed.

         “Technically I never left,” John pointed out as he lay back again, and Ronon slipped in through the gap in the curtains. Up close it didn't look like any of the blood belonged to Ronon, and most of it didn't even look like it had ever belonged to a human. The hem of his shirt in particular was soaked through with black.

         “What happened out there? What was he even doing on the Genii homeworld?” Ronon shook his head and sat at the foot of the bed, looking lost.

         “Dunno. Heard some of the soldiers say they shot down a dart a few days ago. So maybe Michael's out of the picture. Whatever happened, he doesn't have his hand thing anymore.”

         “Huh,” John said. “Good?” Ronon shrugged.

         “Don't think he can heal without it.”

         “Ah,” John said. “Not good.” Ronon snorted humorlessly.

        “No. Not good.” Neither of them knew what to say to that, so they sat in silence and watched the parade of medical staff back and forth. Eventually, the other side of the curtain pulled back. Teyla, Torren in her arms, looked at John, then Ronon, and pulled herself up to sit cross-legged beside Ronon at the end of the bed.

         It must have been a few hours before Keller showed up. Ronon had migrated to the neighboring bed, where he was pretending not to be on the verge of falling asleep, while Teyla had come and gone a few times, but kept ending up back where she'd started. John was giving serious consideration to kicking them out and going back to sleep himself. Somehow Keller, when she reemerged from surgery, looked more tired than all three of them put together.

         “How'd it go?” Ronon might have passed for casual to someone who had never met him, but somehow John didn't think any of them were fooled. Visibly frustrated, Keller threw her hands wide.

         “Well, it's been a real crash course in wraith anatomy, but I honestly can't tell. When I took the tracker out, it was like a race against his regeneration, but this time I had to actually use sutures. It's a mess in there, and I don't know what anything is supposed to look like.” Keller braced herself on the end of the bed and hunched her shoulders. John fought back the sudden urge to pat her on the head.

         “Was none of the data Rodney recovered from Michael's lab useful?” Teyla twisted around to look at Dr. Keller, and seemed to be fighting the same impulse as John.

         “What data?” John asked.Evidently spending a few days unconscious meant you missed some things.

        “Hard drives. It was the thing that–” Keller mimed an explosion “–was booby-trapped. Yes, there's a lot of data, but I just haven't had time to look at it all. The only thing I can think of is thawing Dr. Beckett out, since he's had longer to study this than I have, and of course that's its own problem, since he's halfway into total organ failure and I can't figure out why without time I don't have to examine him before there's no halfway about it. I'm beginning to think I'm really out of my depth here.”

         “You are a brilliant woman, and I have faith that you will find solutions, Jennifer,” was what Teyla said, which was kind and true, and unfortunately at the same time as what John said, which was:

         “I think we should contact Todd.” In the silence that followed, John had plenty of time and undivided attention to add, lamely: “Not that I don't agree with Teyla. Jennifer. You're a great doctor.”

        “Thanks,” Keller said, after a very long and equally awkward silence in which John's soul tried its best to vacate his body. “What was that first part again?”

         “I think… That it would make sense… To call our only ally who might actually be able to fix our weird wraith science problems.” For some reason everyone was still looking at him like he was speaking Ancient, which was unfair because John had had way, way worse ideas.

         “Was this something else the Rodney of the future told you to do?” There were a lot of reasons Teyla was John's favorite. Well. Among the top five. Maybe three.

         “Yeah.” Him and future-Todd, who made for a much less convincing argument, but John hadn't found exactly the right moment to tell anybody about that. Maybe, if he could convince Carter to go along with it, he'd have a chance soon. “Look, his intel hasn't steered us wrong so far. Pretty much the worst thing he can do is say no, right?”

         “I can think of way worse,” Ronon cut in.

         “I agree. Todd has proven to be an unpredictable ally at best. You may end up endangering the entire city for the sake of one wraith,” Teyla added, which John couldn't really argue with.

         “I don't know that I've got this one, to be totally honest,” Keller said at last. “I can't tell how much time Schuyler has, but I don't think it's a lot without his body's natural ability to heal itself. It might not hurt to at least ask, and if we can't give Todd what he wants in exchange, I guess that's that.” Sighing, Keller straightened up and twisted until something in her spine popped.

         “Technically it's ultimately your call, anyway.” It almost seemed like she was talking to John, but that didn't make any sense. She even turned back to look at him, where John's expression must have given some of his confusion away. “Oh. Nobody told you.”

        “Nobody told me what?” Alarm bells were going off all over on the inside of John's head. He exchanged a look with Ronon, but Ronon shrugged back at him. “What happened to Colonel Carter?”

         “She was recalled to Earth to review her performance here. It was rather sudden, and it is unclear whether she will be allowed to return. In the meantime…” Teyla paused, giving Keller a mildly reproachful look over her shoulder. “Dr. Keller is correct. You are the highest-ranking member of your mission here.”

         Oh.

         “Oh,” John said aloud, after taking a second or two to process. “In that case, I think I'm gonna need some pants.”

          One pair of pants and about a million second thoughts later, John ended up in a wheelchair (under protest, and following a disastrous and probably outwardly hilarious attempt to walk on his own) in Dr. Keller's office, holding Torren as Teyla sat in Keller's chair and tried to think Todd-contacting thoughts. They'd considered a number of other options, including passing messages from contact to contact and talking John out of the idea entirely, but in the end Teyla had carefully passed her son into John's arms and volunteered to reach out herself. Whether he'd convinced her or merely worn out her patience, John couldn't say, but he strongly suspected the latter. Across the desk, Teyla's serene face twitched into a frown, then smoothed out again.

         “He hears me,” she said aloud, sounding as faraway as her mind was stretching. Suddenly, her eyes flew open and she gasped, stretching a hand out blindly, before whatever had a hold on her relented and she slumped back again. As much as Teyla ever slumped.

         “You okay?” Ronon asked, as the baby in John's arms began to wiggle and make anxious noises.

         “Yes, I am fine. Todd's reaction was… Unexpectedly passionate.” She rounded the desk and took Torren back from John, making those noises mothers across the universe use to calm their babies down.

         “Is that a ‘no,’ then?” John asked, since it seemed like nobody else was going to.

         “It was a very emphatic ‘yes.’ He will be dialing in, alone and unarmed, within the hour.” Even Teyla sounded surprised.

         “How'd you get him to agree to that after what happened last time?” Ronon, on the other hand, sounded skeptical, like the logical angel on John's shoulder, arguing with the memory of Todd's murmured _trust me_.

         “It was his suggestion. When I showed him Schuyler, I felt Todd's shock before he was able to hide it from me. I believe he would have agreed to any terms I gave him.” She looked at John, who could only shrug in answer.

         “Still worried he's gonna double-cross us?” Since Teyla had so recently seen the inside of Todd's squirrelly brain. Slowly, Teyla shook her head.

         “No, John. I am certain that he will not.” _Trust me._ Quiet as a prayer.

         “I guess I should figure out how to get down to the gate room, then,” John said, fiddling with the chair until he found the brakes again. “This place isn't real ADA-compliant, is it?” Explaining that to Ronon and Teyla took most of the trip and the remaining time before the wormhole finally engaged, and it was almost enough to drown out John's doubts and the echo of future-Todd's plea.

         _Trust me._

        Here went nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Mild gore: Per canon in Search and Rescue John gets a piece of rebar in the side. Not too gory. Another character is involved in a whole lot of offscreen fights that result in extensive life-threatening injuries. I wasn't super explicit, I don't think.
> 
> If you're here for one ship only, I'm afraid this is more of a small fleet. There's not enough Todd/Sheppard in the world, I know. 
> 
> I'm not sure why you are here, but I'm shocked and delighted to have you. Hello.
> 
> Also it'd been years since I updated my profile, and oh boy did it need a change.


End file.
